Source: The Nation

Killing reporters here is only one element in a campaign of state terror.

Xalapa, Mexico—This pleasant colonial city in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains, the capital of Veracruz state, is deceptively calm. Despite the surface normality, Veracruz may be the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. In the past seven years, a total of 25 reporters have been murdered, and another four have disappeared, according to the journalists I’ve talked to here. (One more reporter has just been murdered in Veracruz state, on March 21. Leobardo Vázquez, who ran a news website, had apparently gotten threats from local officials.) By contrast, in the entire United States, over the past 16 years only one journalist has been murdered for doing his job. read more

Source: Roar Magazine

The recent protests show that Tunisia is still a cauldron of popular resistance against neoliberal and neo-colonial attacks on the country’s sovereignty.

round 800 people were arrested, dozens were injured and at least one person was killed in a violent police crackdown on the protests that rocked Tunisia for over two weeks in January. The protesters, who stemmed from a wide variety of social and economic backgrounds, took to the streets in response to the government’s announcement of its 2018 budget. A new round of harsh austerity measures are predicted to inflate prices of basic foods, fuel and energy and to further undermine crucial public services such as health care and education. read more

Source: The Guardian

The administration is mired in incompetence and calamity. So why aren’t his enemies presenting a hopeful alternative?

Even by Donald Trump’s standards, Tuesday was extraordinary. First came the tweet that he had fired his secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Then a state department spokesman issued a statement claiming Tillerson was “unaware of the reason” for his dismissal, and had heard about it on Twitter. A few hours later the spokesman had been fired too. Meanwhile the lawyer of porn actor Stephanie Clifford (stage name: Stormy Daniels), who allegedly had an affair with Trump, warned the country to “buckle up” as Clifford sought to extract herself from her non-disclosure agreement so she could “publish any materials, such as text messages, photos and/or videos relating to the president that she may have in her possession”. Back in Washington, the Trump team announced it would be hiring John McEntee, Trump’s former personal assistant, as a senior adviser for campaign operations. The day before, McEntee had been escorted from the White House because he is under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes. read more

Source: The Nation

Fifty years ago this month, on March 16, 1968, two companies of US Army troops belonging to the Americal Division entered the My Lai and My Khe hamlets of Son My village, in Quang Ngai province, and killed 504 Vietnamese civilians—overwhelmingly women, children, and old men—in cold blood. The national press and political elites have long learned to treat the massacre as a tragedy that did not reflect official US policy. And ever since the Peers Commission report on My Lai was finally released to the public in November 1974 (the completed report had been transmitted to the Army chief of staff in March 1970), the press and public have believed that the commission, led by Lieut. Gen. William Peers, not only revealed the extent of the massacre but exposed the cover-up, implicating officers all the way up to the commander of the Americal Division, Gen. Samuel Koster. read more